NDAA Plaintiffs Say Obama Flipped Out When A Judge Blocked The Act Because He Was Already Detaining PeopleAbby Rogers|29 minutes ago|0|

The Obama administration might be coming for you, no matter who you are, according to a group of people fighting President Barack Obama's indefinite detention act.

Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, and a whole host of others involved in the fight against the National Defense Authorization Act yesterday took to Reddit to answer questions about the act.

A federal judge permanently blocked the NDAA — which allows the government to indefinitely detain anyone even remotely related to terrorism — claiming it has a "chilling effect" on free speech.

But the Obama administration was quick to pounce, saying Judge Katherine B. Forrest overstepped her bounds in opposing the White House.

"Anyone who dissents is in threat," Hedges wrote in response to a question about who should fear the act. "The legislation, as the dumped emails by Wikileaks from the security firm Stafford illustrated, allows the state to tie a legitimate dissident group to terrorism and strip them of their right of dissent."

Another Redditor asked why Obama was so quick to fight Forrest's ruling.

"If the Obama administration simply appealed it, as we expected, it would have raised this red flag," Hedges wrote. "But since they were so aggressive it means that once Judge Forrest declared the law invalid, if they were using it, as we expect, they could be held in contempt of court. This was quite disturbing, for it means, I suspect, that U.S. citizens, probably dual nationals, are being held in military detention facilities almost certainly overseas and maybe at home."

A majority of small business owners and manufacturers are mulling drastic changes to comply with Obamacare, with 21 percent set to drop health insurance to workers altogether and 38 percent planning to make employees pay much more.

In a poll done for the National Association of Manufacturers and National Federation of Independent Businesses, 59 percent said that they will have to consider changes once the full law kicks in because increased costs will jeopardize their operations. According to the poll, 67 percent expect Obamacare to raise healthcare costs.

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open government” and “act promptly” to make information public.

As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn’t met those goals, failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to "usher in a new era of open government" and "act promptly" to make information public. Megan Hughes reports on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg).Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.

“When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’” said Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests from 1981 to 2007.

The Bloomberg survey was designed in part to gauge the timeliness of responses, which Attorney General Eric Holder called “an essential component of transparency” in a March 2009 memo. About half of the 57 agencies eventually disclosed the out-of-town travel expenses generated by their top official by Sept. 14, most of them well past the legal deadline.

Public Interest

Bloomberg reporters in June filed FOIA requests for fiscal year 2011 taxpayer-supported travel for Cabinet secretaries and top officials of major departments. Justice Department official Melanie Ann Pustay said in an interview that disclosure of those records is in the public interest.

Data and Graphics: Testing Obama's Promise of Government Transparency

Even agency heads who publicly announce their events -- including Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- didn’t provide the costs of their out-of-town trips more than three months after the initial request.

“It’s ironic that the demands in the presidential campaign for Mitt Romney’s tax returns are unrelenting, but when it comes time to release the schedules for senior appointees there’s the same denial of access,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor who studies the federal bureaucracy.

“Over the past four years, federal agencies have gone to great efforts to make government more transparent and more accessible than ever, to provide people with information that they can use in their daily lives,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, who noted that Obama received an award for his commitment to open government. The March 2011 presentation of that award was closed to the press.

A request made in June for the travel records of Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will remain unfulfilled for more than a year, according to a federal official involved in the case.

“We really appreciate your patience in this matter. The estimated completion date is July 2013,” wrote Chris Barnes, a State Department FOIA official, in a Sept. 24 e-mail. Under FOIA, the department is required to offer a timetable for delayed responses.

GSA Scandal

Government travel costs have received greater scrutiny since a report by the General Services Administration’s inspector general on April 2 revealed that a 2010 Las Vegas junket -- featuring a mind reader and a clown -- cost taxpayers more than $823,000. Since then, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson has resigned and the IG has referred the matter to the Department of Justice.

Records obtained as a result of another Bloomberg FOIA request showed that the GSA almost tripled its expenditures for conferences from 2005 to 2010. Taxpayers paid $27.8 million for more than 200 overnight gatherings attended by at least 50 GSA employees over the five-year period, according to the records.

Under Obama, federal agencies also have stepped up the use of exemptions to block the release of information.

During the first year of the administration, cabinet agencies employed exemptions 466,402 times, a 50 percent jump from the last year of the presidency of George W. Bush. While exemption citations have since been reduced by 21 percent from that high, they still are above the level seen during the Bush administration, according to Justice Department data.

DHS Exemptions

The majority of the exemptions came from the Department of Homeland Security, which gets the most requests, records show.

The greater number of documents released online helps explain the increased use of exemptions, according to Tracy Russo, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. “The pool of requests that are made tend to be more complex,” she said.

Open government advocates note that Obama’s transparency pledge is undermined by a federal bureaucracy that often cites staff shortages and compliance costs to delay the release of information.

“I don’t think the administration has been very good at all on open-government issues,” said Katherine Meyer, a Washington attorney who has been filing open records requests since the late 1970s. “The Obama administration is as bad as any of them, and to some extent worse.”

Fee Fight

In one case Meyer pursued, the Center for Auto Safety was told by Treasury FOIA officials that its request for records relating to the U.S. auto bailout would cost $38,000. Meyer successfully argued the fees should be waived because the request was in the public interest.

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, is designed to open up the process of government to citizens. Individuals have the right to file requests, and the law mandates that the department answer the query within 20 working days, ask for a 10-day extension, or offer a timetable for the release of the information.

In the past, FOIA has been used to obtain a wide range of government records. Among them: Documents on the use of the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War; Department of Transportation reports detailing safety issues with the Ford Pinto’s fuel tank that contributed to some 500 deaths; and details of the Bush administration’s deliberations on the use of torture following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘Smoking Gun’

“It’s the smoking gun that often holds government accountable for its misdeeds,” said Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment attorney at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth Plc in Arlington, Virginia, who also serves as legal counsel for the American Society of News Editors.

Miriam Nisbet, the head of the Office of Government Information Services, which acts as a FOIA ombudsman, said Obama deserves praise for highlighting government accountability.

“We see a great deal of emphasis and attention paid to transparency,” she said. “That is a really important message.”

Nisbet’s office offered travel documents three days after acknowledging the FOIA request.

The Bloomberg FOIA filing also asked each department to identify trips, lodging and meals provided by non-federal sources. All told, 30 of the 57 agencies contacted replied with those travel records by Sept. 14.

SBA Response

Of the 20 Cabinet-level agencies contacted by Bloomberg News, only the Small Business Administration met the legal 20- day deadline by disclosing that Administrator Karen Mills took 27 trips out of Washington at a total cost to the U.S. taxpayer of $15,856.

The records of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Labor Hilda Solis, former Secretary of Commerce and Acting Secretary Gary Locke and Rebecca Blank, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Jacob Lew, the former director of the Office and Management and Budget who is now White House Chief of Staff, were released to Bloomberg News under the request, though those agencies did not meet the 20-day deadline.

Kirk, “who travels all over the world” for his duties according to the USTR website, took 23 business trips in fiscal 2011, 17 of which involved domestic travel, for a cost of about $45,000. Kirk “has said many times that increased outreach to the American people” is important for economic growth, USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said in an e-mail.

No Excuse

Eric Newton, senior adviser at the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based group that promotes citizen engagement, said agencies have no excuse not to rapidly disclose travel costs.

“In a 24/7 world, it should take two days, it should take two hours,” Newton said. “If it’s public, it should be just there.”

The Department of Justice, which is charged with monitoring how all federal agencies respond to FOIA requests, has yet to release the travel details of top officials at three of its affiliated agencies: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pustay, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, said that taxpayer-supported travel records are “certainly something that people would ask for and something that’s of interest to the public.” She said “the crush of work” makes swift replies difficult.

Redacted Information

None of the nine exemptions under the FOIA -- which protect national security, personal information or corporate trade secrets, for example -- allow taxpayer-supported travel expenses to remain hidden from view.

Those records may include information, such as private mobile-phone numbers or information related to security, that is exempted from disclosure, which could be causing the delays, Pustay said.

Responsive agencies were able to redact personal details within the FOIA time period. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the chief regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provided the travel expense records for Acting Director Edward DeMarco’s six trips out of town within 15 days of the filing.

DeMarco’s trips cost $5,653.29, the documents show. Personal information such as his Social Security number and home address were blacked-out in the file.

Data and Graphics: Testing Obama's Promise of Government Transparency

The process for accessing information that hasn’t been already released remains confusing, time-consuming and at times antagonistic, said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a Washington-based open-information repository.

‘Obfuscation’ Culture

“There is a culture of obfuscation among agency Freedom of Information officials,” he said. “Bureaucrats are able to deter a lot of citizen engagement.”

Travel records were largely shielded from public view until Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act on July 4, 1966. Congress adopted post-Watergate reforms in 1974, giving agencies a deadline to comply with requests and narrowing exemptions for law enforcement and national security agencies. The FOIA law was updated another four times through 2007, when the Office of Government Information Services was established as the federal ombudsman.

The White House says it has released more than 2.5 million records since Obama took office. Recovery.gov allows citizens to track stimulus spending by state. The administration also has for the first time posted the names of White House visitors, though not a full list of who has attended meetings.

Backlogged Files

Other records now disclosed include the number of weapons in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, report cards for veterans’ hospitals, and employer-specific workplace safety records kept by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The total number of FOIA requests increased, with 631,424 processed last year, compared with 600,849 in 2010.

The government’s website dedicated to monitoring its response to filings, FOIA.gov, shows the number of backlogged requests grew 20 percent to 83,490 filings from 2010 to 2011.

The Justice Department reported in 2008 that there were 3,691 full-time FOIA personnel across all departments and agencies. In 2011, the figure increased by 19 percent to 4,400, according to the department. Some agencies outsource FOIA- related tasks, including the redaction process. The government has spent at least $86.2 million on contracts described as pertaining to FOIA since 2009, according to federal procurement data compiled by Bloomberg.

The administration acknowledged systemic issues with the FOIA process when the Office of Management and Budget issued guidelines Aug. 24 to all federal agencies on how to streamline government information. The memo called for all government information to be stored in an electronic format by December 2019 -- almost three years after the end of a potential second Obama term.

Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at the Washington- based Brookings Institution, called the survey results a “grim” assessment of Obama’s transparency record. He said the president -- like many of the men who have occupied the Oval Office -- has discovered how difficult it is to bend the government’s bureaucracies to his will.

“The sad part is it won’t be any better for the next folks either,” Hess said. “The only difference perhaps is the Obama people led us to believe it would be different.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net; Danielle Ivory in Washington at divory@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net; Stephanie Stoughton at sstoughton@bloomberg.net

Democrat Former Senator Who Voted For ObamaCare Exposes Real World Consequences

Former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN): ‘Threatens Thousands Of American Jobs’

“A 2.3% tax on medical-device sales, not profits, was imposed… there will be little or no increase in sales volume to offset the added cost of $30 billion—according to the Congressional Budget Office—to the industry. This tax comes straight out of a company’s bottom line.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

•“The hit will be severe. For a typical company, a 2.3% tax on revenues equals a 15% tax on profits. When combined with a 35% corporate tax and state corporate taxes, the tax rate for the medical-device industry will exceed 50% in most jurisdictions. Many marginally profitable businesses will then hemorrhage red ink, since they’ll have to pay the excise tax whether they are making money or not.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

•“This month, Welch Allyn—a maker of stethoscopes and blood-pressure cuffs—announced that it will lay off 10% of its global workforce over the next three years, but all of the jobs being cut are in the U.S.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

•“In my state of Indiana alone, Cook Medical has canceled plans to build one new U.S. facility annually in each of the next several years, and Zimmer plans to lay off 450 workers, while Hill-Rom expects to lay off 200. Stryker, based in Michigan, anticipates having to lay off 1,000 workers.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

Obama uses Down syndrome to hit Romney Paul Bedard In its latest effort to slap Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comment, the Obama campaign on Monday tapped a young woman with Down syndrome to pull at the heartstrings of undecided voters.

The Obama-Biden campaign's web page featured a "letter of the week" from a 25-year-old woman who wrote that "I am one of the 47% of Americans who fall under Mitt Romney's definition of 'entitled' and 'unable to take responsibility for my life.' I have Down syndrome."

The letter comes on the heel of the campaign's TV ad playing in battleground states that uses the audio of Romney dismissing efforts to win over 47 percent of voters dedicated to Obama because they receive some kind of government assistance. While the Romney campaign said the context is about the election and not how he will approach the nation as president, the Obama campaign has made the case that Romney won't look out for those who need help.

Enter "Brittany" and her letter. In it, she said that she is a registered Democrat, and on assistance, which she said makes her part of Obama's 47 percent.

"My mother applied for Social Security's Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) for me when I was 19. I really want to make lots of money and have a hot tub someday, but SSI subtracts my paychecks from my SSI benefits, so I don't have much to put into a savings account," she wrote.

"I am now working for a store, folding clothes and doing returns. I like my job a lot! I make $4.98 an hour and I am allowed to work 25-30 hours a week (I have paid $542.72 in federal, FICA, state, and city taxes this year as of August 31st)," she added in a knock at Romney's other comment that many of Obama's supporters don't pay taxes.

It's full of very cute lines. "I just got my own apartment and share it with another girl like me. I get to pay rent now ($325 a month) and pay for my telephone and cable because I like the Disney Channel. I was not allowed to take my dog with me, but I can hang all of my Hannah Montana posters on my bedroom wall," she wrote.

And, she added, "I have also included my picture, not just because I'm cute, but because I wanted to give you a face of one of the 47% to share with Mr. Romney."

It is not difficult to see what a horror a second Obama presidency will look like. Obama is consistent in his foreign policy -- anti-freedom, pro-jihad. Four years into his presidency, the world is radically transformed, and soon will be unrecognizable.

His most infamous statement was during a radio interview on September 11, 2001, accusing Israel of the attack on the WTC. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Jewish Press

For two weeks every year, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe holds what it refers to as the world’s largest human rights and democracy conference, called the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. Organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, this year’s meeting is taking place in Warsaw, and it began last week. Special attention is focused this year on freedom of religion and belief, the rights of Roma (formerly called gypsies) women and the rights of national minorities in OSCE countries.

The head of the U.S. delegation to the conference this year is Ambassador Avis Bohlen, a retired foreign service officer whose career included serving as Ambassador to Bulgaria from 1996 – 1999.

There are three public members of the U.S. delegation. Nida Gelazis, of the Woodrow Wilson Center, is a scholar of international human rights, international law and citizenship policies and protection of national minorities.

Dr. Ethel Brooks, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, is the second representative of the U.S. at the conference. Brooks has published many articles on her research areas which include child labor in third world countries, globalization and political economies.

The third public member chosen to attend the human rights conference as a representative of the U.S. is Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.

The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.

At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."

A new report obtained by Townhall from the non-partisan Government Accountability Institute [GAI] shows the Obama campaign has potentially violated federal election law by failing to prevent the use of fraudulent or foreign credit card transactions on the official Obama for America [OFA] donation webpage.

For the past eight months, GAI has been investigating the potential influence of foreign online campaign donations in House, Senate and presidential elections. The report was conducted using spidering software and found thousands of foreign sites linking to campaign donation pages. The investigation was conducted with the guidance of a former U.S. attorney. GAI is led by Peter Schweizer, who recently exposed congressional insider trading in his book Throw Them All Out.

“As FBI surveillance tapes have previously shown, foreign governments understand and are eager to exploit the weaknesses of American campaigns,” the report says. “This, combined with the Internet’s ability to disintermediate campaign contributions on a mass scale, as well as outmoded and lax Federal Election Commission rules, make U.S. elections vulnerable to foreign influence.”

OFA seems to be taking advantage of a “foreign donor loophole” by not using CVV on their campaign donation page. When you donate online to the Obama campaign using a credit card, the contribution webpage does not require donors to enter a secure CVV number (also known as CSC, CVV2 or CVN), the three-digit securing code on the back of credit cards. This code, although not 100 percent effective, is used to ensure a person making a purchase physically possesses the card. According to the report, 90 percent of e-commerce and 19 of the 20 largest charities in the United States use a CVV code, making its use standard industry practice in order to prevent fraud. Another anti-fraud security measure includes software, better known as an Address Verification System, to verify a donor’s address matches the address on file with the credit card company. The investigation could not determine whether OFA is using this type of software to prevent fraudulent or illegal donations.

Because of the lack of a CVV code requirement, the door is opened for OFA to accept robo-donations, or in other words, large numbers of small and automatic donations made online to evade FEC reporting requirements. Although it isn’t illegal to decline the use of a secure CVV credit card code for campaign donations, it is illegal to accept campaign donations from foreign sources. Campaigns are required under criminal code not to solicit, accept or receive foreign donations in any amount. The Federal Elections Commission doesn’t require campaigns to disclose the names of donors making contributions of less than $200 unless audited. In addition, FEC rules don’t require campaigns to keep records of those giving less than $50. These rules combined with the lack of a CVV numbers make it easy for campaigns to get away with taking foreign donations.

According to GAI, it is the duty of the campaign to “ensure compliance with the law. Indeed, they risk criminal prosecution for the conscious failure to do so. This means that whether or not the FEC requires it to be reported, campaigns have an independent duty under the law to discover and protect against criminal campaign contributions.” Protecting against criminal campaign contributions is easily accomplished by requiring a CVV code on the campaign donation page.

OFA has specifically touted its “grassroots” success by showcasing the majority of its donations coming from those giving less than $200. It appears the campaign also solicits funds for less than $200 in order to avoid having to report the name of the person making a donation under FEC rules. The GAI documents included the following email from Barack Obama to campaign supporters:

IT ALL ADDS UP

A large part of the Team Obama operation is outsourced. More than 200 domain names with the word “Obama” in the web address have been purchased. The most significant of these websites may be Obama.com, which is owned by an Obama bundler in Shanghai, China with “questionable business ties to state-run Chinese enterprises,” according to the report.

Obama.com was purchased in 2008, and, although Obama.com is owned by a third party, not the campaign itself, the site redirects its foreign traffic, a whopping 68 percent, directly to the official Obama for America campaign donation page. The Obama campaign’s official and main website, BarackObama.com, sees 43 percent of its traffic coming from foreign IP addresses, according to web metrics firm Markosweb and noted in the report.

According to industry leading web analytics site Markosweb, an anonymously registered redirect site (Obama.com) features 68 % foreign traffic. Starting in December 2011, the site was linked to a specific donation page on the official BarackObama.com campaign website for ten months. The page loaded a tracking number, 634930, into a space on the website labeled "who encouraged you to make this donation." That tracking number is embedded in the source code for Obama.com and is associated with the Obama Victory Fund. In early September 2012, the page began redirecting to the standard Obama Victory Fund donation page. Search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, using common spamming techniques, may have been undertaken by unknown third-parties, generating foreign traffic to Obama.com.

China has a long history of trying to illegally influence American elections. Their efforts were most prominent in the 1990s.

In the past, foreign governments have relied on middlemen to transfer illegal campaign contributions. With the explosion of Internet campaign fundraising, the prospect of foreign powers, criminal gangs, foreign individuals, or domestic fraudsters making direct campaign contributions to American elections becomes far more likely. Put simply, campaign fundraising crimes are now just a click away. Rather than risking detection or relying on a middleman, donations can be anonymously donated through campaign websites. The state of Internet security of many political campaigns’ websites leaves American elections vulnerable to fraud or foreign influence.

AN HONEST MISTAKE, OR SOMETHING MORE?

Is the non-use of CVV code verification simply an oversight or mistake made by Obama for America? Most likely, no. The Obama campaign is willing to pay millions in fees in order to accept unsecured contributions on their donation page without the CVV code. Attorney Kenneth Sukhia analyzed the GAI’s findings and this revelation in the following way in a separate report.

“As GAI points out, if a campaign is truly seeking to do all it can to prevent illicit contributions, there is no reason not to employ these basic fraud prevention tools. First, these tools are easily installed, and once set up, operate with a minimum of administrative oversight by the vendor. They are fully automated, but can be easily re-calibrated as called for. “

“Under these circumstances, a campaign’s decision to turn off either of these systems despite the increased fees raises legitimate questions as to a campaign’s knowing failure to use its best efforts to comply with the laws prohibiting foreign contributions. Indeed, it’s reasonable to ask why any campaign would ever opt to pay card issuers more for less information and less security. More importantly, why pay card issuers more when doing so lessens a campaign’s ability to comply with the law? It’s hard to imagine any campaign would pay extra for less security and marketing intelligence, unless it stood to benefit in some way from doing so.”

“Because a campaign’s decision to opt out of the standard security measures and to pay more to receive less information about their contributors defies all conventional campaign logic, and because it is difficult to identify a more plausible motive, there is reason to suspect that such decisions may be motivated by the belief that more money could be raised through foreign contributions than lost in added fees by declining security tools designed to stop them.”

OFA isn’t run by amateurs and has a highly sophisticated online presence. OFA is known as the “gold standard” in online technology with a Facebook co-founder, veteran YouTube videographer and an award-winning CNN producer keeping everything running smoothly.

Not to mention, the campaign obviously sees the benefits in using a CVV code to prevent fraud. After all, OFA uses a CVV security code for merchandise purchases. To purchase a sweatshirt or other item in the OFA store, a CVV code must be entered at check out, but the donation page does not require a credit card security code to be used. In addition, the chief technology officer of the Obama campaign, Harper Reed, is a former chief technology officer of the T-shirt company Threadless. Threadless requires a CVV code for online purchases. They clearly know how CVV codes work.

THE NUMBERS

As of September 26, 2012, the Obama campaign has raised $271,327,755 in contributions under $200 for the 2012 cycle. In 2008, it was $335,139,233. The Romney campaign has raised just $58,456,968 in contributions under $200 and has all CVV and online security measures in place. In total, the Obama campaign raised $500 million online in 2008 with $335 million in contributions--more than half--falling under the $200 reporting requirement. Obama has raised more online funds than any campaign in history.

As reported over the weekend, the Obama campaign raised $181 million in September alone--only 2 percent of those donations are required to be reported to the FEC.

The campaign said that just over 1.8 million people made donations to the campaign last month. According to the campaign, over 500k of these were brand-new donors, having neither given in 2008 nor 2012. 98% of contributions were under the reporting threshold of $250. Of these, the average contribution was $53. [It's] really a tale of two worlds. 35k people gave an average of $2,600, while just over 1.7 million people gave an average of $53. Half the campaign's haul came from people giving around the maximum amount and half from people who don't have to be disclosed. Seems a bit odd. The average of $53 from small donors is particularly noteworthy. Contributions under $200 don't have to be disclosed, but the campaign still has to keep track of the donor's name, in case subsequent donations push their contribution over the reporting threshold. For contributions under $50, however, the campaign doesn't even have to keep track of the donor's name. It is effectively considered a "petty cash" donation. A person could theoretically make 10 $49 donations and never be reported, even though their total contributions are above the FEC's reporting threshold. With an average donation of $53 from small donors, Obama has A LOT of donors who will never be disclosed and whose names aren't even known to the campaign. Tens of millions of dollars worth.

HOW LIABLE?

As previously mentioned, the GAI report mentions campaigns have an obligation to protect against illegal campaign contributions. The law under U.S. Code makes it illegal for campaigns or political committees to accept direct or indirect contributions of money from foreign nationals. It is also illegal for a campaign or committee to “solicit, accept, or receive a contribution from a foreign national." Penalties for violations are stiff, according to the report.

While no person can be held accountable under the law for violations he or she is powerless to prevent or for violations of which a person had no knowledge, the law recognizes that to permit meaningful enforcement a person cannot escape responsibility for a crime by deliberately ignoring facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that a crime is most likely being committed. Moreover, the FEC regulations make it clear that a campaign official cannot avoid criminal culpability by ignoring facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether foreign nationals are contributing funds to the campaign.

DIRECT SOLICITATIONS FROM OFA TO FOREIGN NATIONALS AND THE ONLINE PAPER TRAIL

The internet for the Obama campaign has proved to be a cash cow, but it's also provided a digital paper trail of potential illegal activity for investigators. When foreign bloggers received donation solicitations from the Obama campaign, they wrote about it online. GAI found their sites and documented their experiences. Social media accomplished the same thing--an online trail of Obama campaign solicitations to foreign nationals.

1. In July and August, a Chinese blogger reposts letters he has received from the Obama campaign, each of which contains a solicitation for $3 or $5 (note that these smaller donations don’t require the campaign to keep any record of them).118 Markosweb states that 87.8% of the traffic flowing to the site comes from China while only 4.5% is from the United States. The website contains hyperlinks that lead to the campaign’s donation page. The website also contains graphics showing the disparity between Romney’s and the President’s fundraising and a countdown clock to the date of the election. Other than the campaign solicitation letters, the website is in Chinese characters.

2. On August 9th, 2012 the Obama campaign sent a solicitation letter to “Hikemt Hadjy-Zadh,” an Azerbaijani citizen. His email address is on an Azerbaijani domain and he posts numerous solicitation letters he has received from the Obama campaign. Mr. Hadjy-Zadh reposts the complete letters on a discussion forum, including numerous hyperlinks that go directly to the campaign’s donation page.

3. A writer in Vietnam writes on a website for the Vietnam Institute for Development Studies (a government-backed think tank) and posts emails he has received from my.barackobama.com with more than 24 total links to the campaign’s donate page embedded in the emails. The website is in the Vietnamese language, hosted on a Vietnamese server, and uses a Vietnamese domain address. In one instance, a letter from Mitch Stewart, Director of the Obama campaign’s “Organizing for America,” asks for donations. Ironically, Stewart laments that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly taking money from foreign sources. The reader is then prompted to give his name and email address and thereafter begins receiving solicitation letters for donations.

4. A Dutch blogger writing in Dutch on a Dutch website reprints an email from March 22, 2010 in which President Obama thanks his supporters for their help. “You’re welcome, Mr. President,” he writes back.

5. The Dutch blog “His Dirk” received a donation request from the campaign. Aware of the U.S. law, the blogger decided not to contribute. The blogger observed, “I imagine many non- Americans have money transferred to the Obama campaign. It’s just too easy.”

6. A member of the Italian Radical Socialist movement and an administrator of their website reposts solicitations from the Obama campaign which he reports receiving regularly for three years. “And because we are three years in his mailing list...But frankly after 3 years his letters excite me much less...”

7. A Japanese blogger named Isogaya posts a link to the Obama campaign’s donation page. When posting the link, Isogaya notes that an option in giving would be to give a gift card.

8. A Norwegian blogger posts a solicitation from the Obama campaign, including the link to the donate page. When another blogger opines that non-U.S. citizens cannot contribute because of American law, the blogger responds in Norwegian,“I have in practice given money to Obama, I had done it.”

9. A blogger in Egypt who serves on the board of the Union of Arab Bloggers posts the solicitation letters he reports to regularly receive from the Obama campaign.127 “We as Arabs and Muslims” support the “Democratic party, compared to the Republican Party,” but notes his objection to the President’s stand on gay marriage.

WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION

Although GAI's findings were most prominent with Obama for America, the “CCV loophole” is a problem across the political spectrum. The report found nearly half of Congress is at least vulnerable to fraud and foreign donations.

Of the 446 House and Senate members who have an online donation page, 47.3% do not require the three or four digit credit card security number (officially called the Card Verification Value, or the CVV) for Internet contributions.

During his run for U.S. Senate, then Republican candidate Marco Rubio’s campaign donation website didn’t have CVV protection. The protection was put in place in May 2012 after the campaign was over. The report alleges the connection to foreign websites could be a violation of the Federal Election Commission solicitation laws and at minimum put Rubio at risk for fraud in his campaign.

The Government Accountability Institute found considerable international interest in the Rubio campaign, including significant foreign traffic going to the website marcorubioforussenate.com. Links on foreign websites often took the form of videos that featured links to “donate” to the Rubio campaign.

Sukhia also mentioned the Rubio campaign in his anaylsis of the report.

“The Government Accountability Institute found considerable international interest in the Rubio campaign, including significant foreign traffic going to the website marcorubioforussenate.com.”

“GAI found numerous video links on foreign websites that featured running ads to “donate” to the Rubio campaign.”

Although campaigns may have CVV in place, organizations they take money from often times do not. For example, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has accepted more than $5.7 million from ActBlue, a fundraising organization that does not require U.S. citizenship verification or a CVV code when accepting contributions.

Because the problems of potential fraud due to a lack of CVV use are so widespread, GAI created a 50-state interactive map to show which members of Congress lack standard secure campaign donation websites.

SOLUTION FOR OBAMA CAMPAIGN

In his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama said, “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities.”

In this situation, the foreign donation problem coming from online sources can be solved and President Obama’s promise of transparency can be kept in one click by enabling all security protections and releasing the names and records on all transactions under $200 to verify Obama for America is a clean campaign operating within FEC law.

Overall, major reforms are needed to ensure foreign contributions are not interfering with or influencing elections in the United States.

A wireless company profiting from the so-called “Obama phone” giveaway program is run by a prominent Democratic donor whose wife has raised more than $1.5 million for the president since 2007.

Last week a video of a President Barack Obama supporter in Ohio claiming to have received a free phone from the president—“[Obama] gave us a phone!”—went viral, prompting media outlets to investigate.

Since 1985 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has operated a program called Lifeline, originally designed to provide free landline phone service for low-income individuals. The government subsidizes telecommunications firms providing the service, and those firms also pass on costs to customers via the “Universal Service Charge” on their phone bills.

The program expanded to include cell phones in 2008. That change has rapidly increased the cost to the federal government—$1.6 billion in 2011, up from $772 million in 2008. The number of Lifeline beneficiaries rose from 7.1 million to 12.5 million during the same period; cell phones account for roughly half of that 12.5 million.

One of the major providers of the free cell phones—3.8 million subscribers as of late 2011—is Miami-based TracFone Wireless, a company whose president and CEO, Frederick “F.J.” Pollak, has donated at least $156,500 to Democratic candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign.

Pollak’s wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama who has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008.

The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s reelection effort that year.

Visitor logs indicate that Frederick and Abigail Pollak have visited the White House seven times. In 2009, the president appointed Abigail to serve on the “Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino.”

TracFone, a direct financial beneficiary of the Lifeline program, receives $10 a month for each subscriber in the form of federal subsidies. The company can make an additional profit selling extra minutes to Lifeline subscribers who exceed their monthly allowance of 250 prepaid minutes.

TracFone and other wireless providers claim that revenue from selling additional minutes to Lifeline customers is low, but decline to publicly release such figures.

The program’s rapidly increasing costs have attracted the attention of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and have prompted calls for reform. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), for example, found that the program was “ripe for fraud.” In some cases, McCaskill noted in a December 2011 press release, the government was issuing multiple free phones to the same individuals.

“I remain troubled by the expansive potential for the program to be abused, especially since Americans contribute to the program through their monthly phone bills,” McCaskill, who is up for reelection, wrote in a formal letter to the FCC. “The current requirements to determine eligibility often do not require customer documentation for participation in Lifeline, which may result in individuals receiving phones who should not be.”

Rep. Tim Griffin (R., Ark.) has introduced legislation to restore the program to its originally intended purpose—providing landlines for use in emergencies—and stop the federal government from issuing free cell phones. Griffin told the Daily Caller he had heard reports of individuals receiving dozens of phones, some of which were of the expensive smartphone variety.

The FCC in response to such pressure announced in February 2012 to reform the program and “reduce the potential for fraud while cutting red tape for consumers and providers.”

TracFone, which did not return a request for comment, is the U.S. affiliate of America Movil, one of the largest phone service providers in Latin America.

America Movil is one of many business ventures controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, currently the world’s richest man, according to Forbes. Slim’s stake in the firm accounts for more than half of his $70 billion net worth.

Slim—who bailed out the New York Times and is often referred to as “Mexico’s Mr. Monopoly”—has visited the White House at least twice, according to visitor logs.

SolarCity (SCTY), another “green energy” company and recipient of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, in under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), sources reveal.

The company, which recently filed for its initial IPO, has disclosed that it received subpoenas in July from the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury Department is investigating whether companies overstated the market value of solar panel arrays they installed when claiming the 30% federal cash grant. The IRS also notified SolarCity that it is auditing two of its investment funds and reviewing the claimed value of solar systems submitted to receive the federal cash grants.

The story of SolarCity is different from that of Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, and the host of other companies that gave big political contributions to the Obama campaign and received taxpayer loans and grants in return because it’s worse.

Like the other scandals, SolarCity’s founder is Elon Musk; the high-profile billionaire has a history of giving lots of money to the Obama campaign. Musk is a big donor to Obama, having given $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and another $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. The relationship has paid huge dividends for the billionaire.

But unlike the other scandals, he has been able to parlay his relationship with the president to creating not one but three Solyndra-type companies.

The National Legal and Policy Center discovered that SolarCity spent $535,000 in 2009 and 2010 to lobby Congress and the Department of Energy on climate legislation, the Recovery Act, “green workforce training and development,” and provisions in various legislation “relevant to solar development.” SolarCity has sought to extend a program, due to expire at the end of 2012, that delivers to manufacturers an upfront cash grant in lieu of a 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (called the Section 1603 grant program). So far, according to DOE reports, SolarCity has received more than $66 million from that program.

SolarCity also received a $344 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Most suspiciously, much of the company’s revenue is generated from a partnership with military housing developers with a goal of installing solar panels on 120,000 rooftops of military housing units across the country

This is not Musk’s first foray into the Washington, DC swamp. His electronic car company Tesla received a loan guarantee for $465 million. Thanks in part to Obama’s DOE, Tesla went public, enriching Musk by nearly $1 billion on his $35 million investment. His other company SpaceX relies on over $1 billion in NASA funding.

Musk symbolizes the Obama entrepreneur — someone who relies on government to make their riches as opposed to the marketplace.

During his debate with President Obama, Mitt Romney quipped that the president was not picking “winners and losers”, but “losers and losers.” This certainly appears to be the case with SolarCity

SolarCity also received a $344 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Most suspiciously, much of the company’s revenue is generated from a partnership with military housing developers with a goal of installing solar panels on 120,000 rooftops of military housing units across the country

Was this you?---------------------Someone vandalized an Obama campaign building in Des Moines by spray painting the words “Muslim Lier” on a large banner, police said.

Executives of an energy company that received $250 million in federal money made donations to members of Congress while the company was facing bankruptcy.

Even as advanced battery maker A123 Systems struggled for financial viability, it played the Washington insider game, where political money and access go hand in hand.

The Massachusetts firm dished out nearly $1 million to hire a powerhouse lobbying firm with close ties to President Barack Obama between 2007 and 2009, and two of its top executives made personal donations to several high-profile Democrats in Congress as it won federal funding for its efforts to build the next generation of lithium batteries for electric vehicles.

And its president and CEO, David Vieau, an early financial backer of President Barack Obama, scored five invitations to the White House in 2009 and 2010, including a meeting he attended with the president, White House logs show. And when the company opened a new Michigan plant, Obama made a high-profile call to congratulate.

The company offered a compelling storyline for an administration eager to create jobs and spur alternative energy: it would employ hundreds of new workers at two plants in the politically critical state of Michigan that was hoping to revive its lagging auto industry.

The efforts paid off.

The company managed to get several lawmakers in both parties to support its request for federal funding, securing almost $6 million during the end of the Bush administration and then a $250 million grant from the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act after Obama took office.

A123's stimulus grant accounted for 12.5 percent of the stimulus' $2 billion fund to support the manufacturing of advanced electrical vehicle components, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries among 29 companies that split the momney.

And the firm scored a spot on a 2011 Obama administration's trade mission to India, a country hungry for alternative energy technologies. The trip put A123 in elite company as just one of only about 300 American companies to get invited on a trade mission during Obama's first term in office.

The company drew praise from both sides of the aisle, including from Samuel Bodman, Bush's Energy secretary, and from Obama himself who called the firm's new Michigan plant when it opened Sept. 13, 2010 and even boasted how he had met with Vieau personally at the White House.

"You guys are making us proud," the president said. "The work you’re doing will help power the American economy for years to come."

But all the promise and political influence couldn't overcome the realities of a startup industry. And when electric vehicle sales lagged and the firm had to replace defective cells in a battery it made for a Fisker electric car, the company teetered toward collapse.

By the time it filed for bankruptcy Tuesday -- the fourth major clean energy company backed by the Obama administration to fail -- it had already collected more than half the taxpayer money it had won from the stimulus. And it reignited an election-year debate over the government's screening process for picking clean energy loan and grant recipients.

Republicans and Democrats immediately traded barbs from Michigan to Washington, a process certain to play out for several days as the merits of government support for the clean energy sector remains a hot topic of debate. The GOP jumped at the chance to portray the company as a failed pet project of the Obama administration, but as reported by the Washington Guardian, several Republican lawmakers have been advocates for cleaner car technology, including current Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra.

Whatever the arguments in the election, the company's efforts to win political influence are undisputed.

Senate lobbying records show A123 hired the powerhouse lobbying firm of Skadden Arps, paying it $380,000 in 2007, $480,000 in 2008 and $110,000 in 2009 to help it secure government backing. The firm has connections across the lobbying company, including four lawyers who served as fundraising bundlers for Obama's 2008 election. Lobbyist Leslie Goldman - the Energy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs under President Jimmy Carter - handled A123's lobbying, disclosure records show.

Among the company's early accomplishments was getting several members of Congress to support its case for federal funding.

Inside the White House, A123's Vieau won invitations to several events, including at least one meeting with President George W. Bush to show off the company's technology in 2007. More recently, the CEO was invited to at least five events or meetings in 2009 and 2010 at the Obama White House, attending at least three of them. One was a small meeting with just seven people and Obama on April 30, 2010, the White House visitor logs show.

Obama referenced the meeting when he called the company's new factory a few months later. "I met with David and some of the A123 team here at the White House back in April, and it’s incredibly exciting to see how far you guys have come since we announced these grants just over a year ago," the president said.

Vieau was an early supporter of Obama, donating $2,300 to the then-senator’s 2008 campaign. His generosity to Democrats continued. He donated a total of $5,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee between 2010 and 2011; $2,000 to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2010; and since 2009 almost $5,000 to Rep. Edward Markey, who represents Massachusetts’s 7th district near the company's headquarters, according to Federal Election Commission donation records.

One of the company’s vice presidents, Mujeeb Ijaz, also made some donations, chiefly $2,300 this year to Rep. Gary Peters, a Democrat in Michigan where the company has two plants,including one producing lithium batteries for cars. Peters was one of 17 Michigan members of Congress who wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in 2009, advocating that some Recovery Act money be given to A123 to support job growth in the state.

The company doesn't have its own political action committee and neither Vieau nor A123 officials returned phone calls seeking comment.

Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.

The indictments of six individuals under that spy law have drawn criticism from those who say the president’s crackdown chills dissent, curtails a free press and betrays Obama’s initial promise to “usher in a new era of open government.”

Enlarge image

The Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers of classified information to the news media than Republican predecessors.

7:17

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas Drake, a whistle-blower and former analyst at the National Security Agency, talks about the personal and professional toll resulting from an allegation that he gave a reporter classified information about inefficiencies and cost over-runs in an NSA surveillance program. Drake, who was prosecuted in 2010 by Obama’s Justice Department under the Espionage Act and maintains he never shared classified information, spoke this week to Bloomberg's David Ellis. (Source: Bloomberg)

Chart: Obama Outpaces Republicans in Pursuit of Leakers

In 2009, former FBI linguist Shamai Leibovitz was indicted for handing over transcripts of government wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in Washington to a blogger. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Photographer: Peter Dejong/AP Photo .Earlier: Obama Cabinet Flunks Disclosure Test With 19 in 20 Ignoring Law.

“There’s a problem with prosecutions that don’t distinguish between bad people -- people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money -- and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions,” said Abbe Lowell, attorney for Stephen J. Kim, an intelligence analyst charged under the Act.

Lowell, the Washington defense lawyer who has counted as his clients the likes of Jack Abramoff, the former Washington lobbyist, and political figures including former presidential candidate John Edwards, said the Obama administration is using the Espionage Act “like a club” against government employees accused of leaks.

Multimedia: Despite Transparency Promise, U.S. Denies More Than 300,000 Information Requests in One Year.

The prosecutions, which Obama and the Justice Department have defended on national security grounds, mean that government officials who speak to the media can face financial and professional ruin as they spend years fighting for their reputations, and, in some cases, their freedom.

‘Sense of Shame’

Kim’s troubles began in September 2009 when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents appeared at the State Department, where he worked as a contract analyst specializing in North Korea. He was questioned about contacts with a reporter about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Eleven months later, Kim was indicted by a grand jury on counts of disclosing classified information and making false statements.

“To be accused of doing something against or harmful to U.S. national interest is something I can’t comprehend,” said Kim, 45, who has pleaded not guilty and faces as many as 15 years in jail if convicted. “Your reputation is shot and there is such a sense of shame brought on the family.”

Kim is one of five individuals who have been pursued by Obama’s Justice Department in connection with alleged leaks of classified information to the news media. The Defense Department is pursuing a sixth case against Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of sending documents to the WikiLeaks website.

New Directive

The Justice Department said that there are established avenues for government employees to follow if they want to report misdeeds. The agency “does not target whistle-blowers in leak cases or any other cases,” Dean Boyd, a department spokesman, said.

“An individual in authorized possession of classified information has no authority or right to unilaterally determine that it should be made public or otherwise disclose it,” he said.

Read more here: Transparency Outsourced as U.S. Hires Vendors for Disclosure Aid

On Oct. 10, Obama issued a policy directive to executive- branch agencies extending whistle-blower protections to national security and intelligence employees, who weren’t included in the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that passed the U.S. House last month and awaits Senate approval.

While the directive seeks to protect those workers from retaliation if they report waste, fraud or abuse through official channels, it “doesn’t include media representatives within the universe of people to whom the whistle-blower can make the disclosure,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center of Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. That still gives Obama the option of pursuing prosecutions of intelligence employees who talk to the press, she said.

‘Important Step’

“The directive is definitely an important step in the right direction, but even if it’s faithfully enforced -- and that’s an open question -- it may not always be enough,” Goitein said. “A whistle-blower’s report could go to the very people who are responsible for the misconduct.”

Lisa O. Monaco, the top Justice Department official in its National Security Division, told lawmakers earlier this year that leaks are damaging to intelligence operations and the country’s national security as a whole.

“Virtually all elements of the intelligence community have suffered severe losses due to leaks,” Monaco said in February testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Romney Criticism

Still, even as the administration pursues its unprecedented crackdown on government leaks it does not condone, the prosecutions have fallen short of the wishes of lawmakers and other national security experts, who point to books and articles that have shed new light on classified operations.

The administration stands accused of anonymously releasing sensitive information to suit its own political purposes. The disclosure of operational details of the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden and attempts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program triggered the announcement in June of a Justice Department probe of those leaks.

That move was criticized by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who called for an independent investigation.

“Obama appointees, who are accountable to President Obama’s attorney general, should not be responsible for investigating leaks coming from the Obama White House,” Romney said in a speech at national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in July. “Who in the White House betrayed these secrets?”

‘Chilling Message’

Administration officials are far less forgiving of those who conduct unauthorized contacts with the press.

“They want to destroy you personally,” said Thomas Drake, a senior National Security Agency employee prosecuted in 2010 by Obama’s Justice Department under the Espionage Act. The message to government workers seeking to expose waste, fraud and abuse is “see nothing, say nothing, don’t speak out -- otherwise we’ll hammer you,” he said.

Drake faced 10 felony counts in connection to an allegation that he shared classified information with a reporter. He was linked to a report in the Baltimore Sun about inefficiencies and cost over-runs in an NSA surveillance program that was later abandoned.

The case against Drake collapsed last year before trial after he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and the government dropped the more serious charges that could have sent him to jail for 35 years.

The prosecution was meant to “make me an object lesson and to send the most chilling message,” said Drake, who is adamant that he never handed over any classified information. “I was essentially bankrupted, blacklisted and blackballed. I was turned into damaged goods.”

Security Exception

Cases such as Drake’s indicate that Obama doesn’t “see the world of national security as being part of open government,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based federal watchdog group. “To me, that’s the most important part that needs an open government ethos foisted upon it.”

Monaco, who is an assistant attorney general, told lawmakers this year that advances in technology play a role in the uptick in prosecutions. Where investigators used to struggle to track down the origins of leaks, they now are able to check phone records, e-mail trails and even “employee physical access or badging records” to trace disclosures, she said.

Intelligence agencies are required to report any unauthorized disclosures to the Justice Department, Monaco said. From there, the department, along with the reporting agency, decide whether to open an investigation.

Kim’s Story

The South Korea-born Kim emigrated to the U.S. with his parents and sister in 1976. He spoke little English when he arrived and was enrolled in third grade. A naturalized citizen and graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Kim made a brief stop on Wall Street before heading to Harvard University to earn a Master’s degree in National Security. He then went to Yale, where at age 31, he earned his Ph.D in diplomatic and military history.

“I decided to forgo a lot of other career opportunities to work in the government,” Kim said.

Kim took a role as an analyst on a range of East Asian matters, with a specialty in North Korea. He briefed many high ranking officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In June 2009, Kim is alleged to have discussed how North Korea might react to a United Nations resolution condemning its nuclear tests with reporter James Rosen of Fox News, according to a person familiar with the case. The relationship between Kim and Rosen began when the State Department’s press office arranged a briefing at the request of Kim’s superiors.

Allegations

Prosecutors say that when asked about his communications with the press by the FBI in their initial meeting in September 2009, Kim lied about a continued relationship with the reporter. That same day, he was told his State Department contract had been terminated for budget reasons, according to court filings.

The government alleges Kim’s contacts with Rosen included “efforts to conceal his relationship with the reporter and the secretive nature of their communications speaks volumes about the defendant’s knowledge of who was, and who was not, entitled to receive” information.

Kim declined to discuss specifics of his case in the interview in his lawyer’s office in Washington. His efforts to get the charges dismissed were rejected last year by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who in denying the motions to dismiss said that the alleged leak involved a report with a classification level that “could be expected to cause grave damage to the national security” if disclosed.

Costly Cases

Cases such as Kim’s, which can be drawn out for years as the prosecution and defense teams work with sensitive materials through dozens of filings and status reports can cost upwards of $1 million, according to Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project who has defended two individuals prosecuted under the law.

Kim said his parents sold their home in South Korea to help pay for his defense. His sister has also pitched in and a former college roommate has created a website to publicize his case and raise funds.

Radack said the Obama administration crackdown is part of an effort to shut down investigations into the workings of the national-security apparatus.

“At first I thought these Espionage Act prosecutions were to curry favor with the national security and intelligence establishments, which saw Obama as weak when he entered office,” Radack said. “It became abundantly clear the more people were indicted, when you read their indictments, that this was a way to create really terrible precedent for ultimately going after journalists.”

Subpoena Fight

The Justice Department disputes the claim that it would use the law to go after journalists. Monaco, in her testimony this year, pointed to department regulations that limit investigators’ access to reporters, even when doing so “makes these investigations more challenging.”

Still, those rules haven’t completely insulated journalists. James Risen, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the New York Times, was subpoenaed to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer indicted under the law for allegedly disclosing information about Iran’s nuclear program.

Risen and his lawyers have fought the subpoena, arguing in February that the subpoena threatens the role of journalism in serving the public interest.

Espionage Act

The Espionage Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917, has until Obama took office been primarily deployed against some of the most damaging double agents in the U.S. history. Those include Aldrich Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency operative convicted in 1994 for spying for Russia, and Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent convicted in 2001 of similar offenses. Both men are serving life sentences without parole in high-security federal prisons.

The law also prohibits the unlawful disclosure of national defense information to those not entitled to receive it -- a provision that defense lawyers say is being abused by Obama’s prosecutors.

“I campaigned for him, contributed to him, voted for him and believed him,” said Radack of Obama. “For someone who pledged to protect and defend whistle-blowers, he certainly has not even remained neutral, he’s affirmatively set us back really, really far.”

Disclosure Provision

The Justice Department has used the disclosure provision to pursue five cases against government officials for allegedly sharing classified information with members of the news media. In 2009, former FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz was indicted for handing over transcripts of government wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in Washington to a blogger. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Obama also continued the George W. Bush administration’s investigation of Drake, the NSA employee.

“It’s important to understand what’s going on in this country -- the government has criminalized whistle-blowing,” said Drake, 55, who lost his $155,000-a-year NSA job in 2008. He now works as a wage-grade employee at an Apple store in a Washington suburb to support his family.

The Justice Department also continues to pursue Sterling, the former CIA officer, and John Kiriakou, an intelligence official who wrote a book detailing the illegal use of waterboarding by the CIA. Kiriakou is also accused of disclosing the identity of a CIA analyst to reporters.

Two Scandals

“The two biggest scandals of the Bush administration in terms of constitutional violations was the use of torture, and renditions, and secret surveillance -- and the only two people to date who have been charged in connection with those scandals are myself and John Kiriakou,” Drake said. “That should tell you something about how hard the Obama administration is going to protect those programs.”

The Espionage Act charges against Drake were dropped last year, with the defendant accepting a minor penalty for exceeding the authorized use of a computer. The Justice Department prosecutors were excoriated by U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett for the more than two-year delay between the first search of Drake’s home and the indictment, as well as the decision to drop the most serious charges days before the case was scheduled to go to trial.

Judge’s Rebuke

“I find it extraordinary in this case for an individual’s home to be searched in November of 2008, for the government to have no explanation for a two-year delay, not a two and a half year delay, for him to be indicted in April of 2010, and then over a year later, on the eve of the trial, in June of 2011, the government says, whoops, we dropped the whole case,” Bennett said at Drake’s July 2011 sentencing, according to a court transcript.

Manning, the analyst who allegedly disclosed hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents to WikiLeaks, faces court-martial under the espionage law.

The president’s openness pledge is also undermined by a recent Bloomberg News analysis, which showed that 19 of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the Freedom of Information Act requiring the disclosure of public documents. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s FOIA requests for top officials’ travel costs within the 20-day window required by the Act.

The White House disputes the notion that the president hasn’t kept his promise of transparency.

“While creating a more open government requires sustained effort, our continued efforts seek to promote accountability, provide people with useful information and harness the dispersed knowledge of the American people,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in an e-mailed statement.

Obama Meeting

In March last year, Obama met with five open-government advocates in the Oval Office. In the session, Brian of the Project on Government Oversight told Obama that the leak prosecutions were undermining his legacy.

“The president shifted in his seat and leaned forward. He said he wanted to engage on this topic because this may be where we have some differences,” Brian wrote in a March 29, 2011 POGO blog post. “He said he doesn’t want to protect the people who leak to the media war plans that could impact the troops.”

Today, Kim rarely sees his South Korean-born wife, who spends time largely in her native country with her parents. Without any security clearances, Kim is restricted to working on non-classified projects for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He said that most of his colleagues have abandoned him, refusing to return phone calls or letting him know that for professional reasons they’d rather he not pick up the phone. The case has left him isolated personally and professionally.

‘Like a Disease’

“I’m like a disease,” Kim said.

Because of preliminary legal wrangling, Kim’s case is unlikely to make it to court before the end of the year, according to a joint status report filed on Aug. 31.

Sitting in his lawyer’s office a few blocks away from the State Department where he once worked, Kim acknowledges that while he’s had bad days in the past 16 months, he has recognized that in the wake of his personal and financial woes, he may be the only person that can keep himself afloat.

“There was one time at home, one time, when I screamed out loud, when I yelled and I cried. The resentment was so deep,” Kim said. “But ever since then I haven’t shed another tear because if I break down, everything breaks down.”

The Kim case is U.S. v. Kim, 10cr00225, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporters on this story: Phil Mattingly in Washington at pmattingly@bloomberg.net Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net;

President Obama's campaign has raised millions of dollars, but officials in Springfield Illinois are still griping about an upaid bill from a 2008 campaign rally.

When he was a candidate in August of 2008, Barack Obama used Springfield as a backdrop to introduce Joe Biden as his running mate. However Springfield Alderman Frank Edwards tells WLS that the Obama campaign has refused to pay $55,000 it owes in police overtime costs:

"If you're going to go after your citizens for bills they owe you then everybody's in. And that's just kind of the way I look at it. I think if the Obama campaign owes us money they ought to pay it."

Edwards says the Obama campaign has given him and other Springfield officials the runaround when they have asked to be paid what is owed.

He also says with Obama planning to hold his election night rally next month at McCormick Place in Chicago, he would advise Mayor Rahm Emanuel to demand all payments upfront, for any costs Chicago taxpayers might incur:

"That's exactly what I'd do. It would be no different than if you, a private individual, went and had an event somewhere and you didn't pay your bill, you didn't pay your catering bill, you didn't pay the rental hall. Anybody that goes to rent you a facility is going to be a little leery of you because you haven't paid your bill. I'd be especially leery now because if he doesn't win re-election his campaign's gonna have debt. And you're gonna be at the bottom of the pile."

Edwards says there also appears to be some confusion about whether the campaign or the Secret Service is responsible for the costs.

The Wall Street Journal reports that George Kaiser, "a Tulsa oil billionaire who bundled campaign checks for Mr. Obama in 2008," is poised to accomplish one of the great scams of all time. Here is how it works. The "primary investment arm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation" is Argonaut Ventures I LCCC. Argonaut Ventures happens to be the largest shareholder in Solyndra LCC, the California-based solar panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee in September 2009 and went bankrupt two years later, laying off nearly 1,000 workers.

Now the very same Argonaut Ventures, thanks to a February 2011 deal with President Obama's Energy Department, (along with Madrone Partners LP) ranks ahead of the U.S. government in order of creditors who will be repaid from the proceeds of the sale of Solyndra's assets. As Bloomberg reports, the sale of the proceeds amounted to $117 million minus the $46 million it cost to sell the assets, for a total of$71 million. Since this is $6 million short of the $77 million Argonaut and Madrone loaned to Solyndra, the U.S. government will not receive a cent from the sale.

Not only that, but thanks to the same deal with the Energy Department, a holding company owned by George Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures will come into possession of Solyndra's net operating losses, which the IRS estimates will save George Kaiser's company as much as $350 million in future taxes.

President Obama dismissed Ayn Rand, whom Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said at one point "inspired him," as having "a pretty narrow vision" in an interview with Rolling Stone.

"Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him," Obama said in the interview. "Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision."

The president went on to describe Rand's objectivist philosophy — which emphasizes self-interest — as having overtaken the GOP.

"It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America," Obama said. "Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a 'you're on your own' society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party."

It was one of Barack Obama’s favorite green-energy companies. And green-energy companies, according to the president, are one of the best ways to facilitate economic growth.

Well, yesterday, The Denver Post detailed the criminal investigation of Abound Solar, a defunct solar-panel manufacturer in Colorado that was run on taxpayer “investments,” for securities fraud, consumer fraud and financial misrepresentation.

Abound shuttered its Colorado plant during the summer and filed for bankruptcy, leaving “125 workers without jobs and taxpayers holding the bag for up to $60 million in defaulted loans.” (Human Events senior reporter Audrey Hudson has already detailed the efforts by the House to investigate the company.) Here’s what Weld County prosecutors are looking into:

The securities-fraud investigation stems from allegations that “officials at Abound Solar knew products the company was selling were defective, and then asked investors to invest in the company without telling them about the defective products,” the DA’s office said in a news release.

Similarly, the consumer-fraud allegation is that Abound knowingly sold defective panels to customers.

The third subject of investigation is that Abound allegedly misled financial institutions when the company was seeking loans.

Since Obama’s “jobs plan” brochure pins the nation’s economic future on the growth of “green-energy jobs” — in fact, it’s one of two areas in the glossy pamphlet that has anything to do with job growth – it seems fair to judge the campaign’s case for the future using one of the companies it touted in the past. Abound was rolled out continually by the administration, the subject of numerous mainstream news stories regarding the stimulus in particular and clean energy generally.

Here is Obama touting Abound Solar personally in a weekly address in 2009. The president claims the project will create 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs.

(more below)

The company first began fleecing the American people with the help of the president in 2009, when then-CEO Pascal Noronha claimed that even without stimulus help his company was on track to create 420 new jobs by the end of the year.

Norohna was at the White House with Obama to welcome his first round of American “investment” as part of the $787 billion stimulus package. “We are honored that the White House invited us to participate in this event. The president’s commitment to help us a build a clean energy economy further validates the work our employees do every day to harness the power of the sun, and provide its energy in abundance in the form of low-cost solar panels.”

Abound Solar was also awarded a $400 million loan guarantee in 2010.

During my 8 years in Colorado, I can’t tell you how many times I was informed by highly enlightened and intelligent people that photovoltaic solar panels were the future of energy and an explosion of jobs were right around the corner. Half of the four solar manufacturers that received loan guarantees have failed. The Obama administration’s response? Slap tariffs on Chinese companies to make solar panels more expensive for everyone. Maybe — and this is just a theory — when you flush companies with millions in taxpayer cash for purely ideological reasons you incentivize irresponsible behavior.

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By Stephen Dinan

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The Washington Times

Updated: 2:29 p.m. on Friday, October 26, 2012

President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training.

The Energy Department’s inspector general also said grantees who received the green jobs-training money did a poor job of reporting their results.

Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program.

“Outcomes for participants were far less than originally proposed,” the auditors said.

The government earmarked more than $400 million for green jobs training programs, and $328.5 million has been spent so far.

About half were already working in the energy sector and wanted retraining, and half were potential new energy workers.

Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it.

“We found no evidence that the incumbent workers in our sample required services or training to keep their job or obtain a new one,” the investigators said in their report.

The Energy Department challenged the findings, saying that auditors didn’t consider the full progress of those who got training. The department said some of those who got training found jobs before their training was completed and said they should have been counted.

Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training, also said as the rest of the training is completed, they expect the numbers to improve.

The audit was released by House oversight committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, who requested the update.

Mr. Issa said in addition to poor performance records, the green jobs money “served as a slush fund” for the Obama administration to dole out payments to allies “like the National Council of La Raza, the Blue Green alliance and the U.S. Steelworkers Union.”

Obama: ‘Some of the Businesses We Encourage Will Fail’ By Matt Cover November 1, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama told a campaign rally that “some of the businesses we encourage will fail” while talking about his plans for increased green energy subsidies in a possible second term.

“Today there are thousands of workers building long-lasting batteries and wind turbines and solar panels all across the country, jobs that weren’t there four years ago,” Obama said, touting his administration’s efforts to subsidize the green energy industry.

Obama then admitted that not everything the government will “bet on” will be successful, admitting that in fact some of the businesses he plans to give taxpayer funds will be sure to fail.

“And sure, not all of the technologies we bet on will pan out. Some of the businesses we encourage will fail, but I promise you this: there is a future for manufacturing here in America,” he said. “There’s a future for clean energy here in America, and I refuse to cede that future to other countries.”

Obama’s signature green energy subsidy program has been plagued by high-profile failures, most notably of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, which received $500 million in government loans and became the face of Obama’s green jobs initiative before going bankrupt in 2010, defaulting on its government loans after administration officials took extraordinary measures to save it, even subordinating those loans to those of private investors, making sure that taxpayers were repaid last.

Normally, government loans are required to be senior to those of private investors, ensuring that taxpayers are first in line to get their money back if the company fails.